


The Weather

by Vadadaca



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Awkward Carlos, Gen, M/M, Rambling Carlos, invented backstory, seriously lots of rambling, someone shut this guy up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:39:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vadadaca/pseuds/Vadadaca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever wonder where the weather comes from? Neither did Carlos, until he had to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weather

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd and written between various projects at work, so CC is most certainly welcome.

Carlos would never admit that he had ever wanted to be anything but a Scientist. He would have people believe, and was fairly sure he already had convinced most of them, that he had sprung from the womb in a lab coat and begun surveying the other infants in the natal ward about the effect of the hospital's air quality in contrast to that of their amniotic fluid. He was a Scientist, so importantly so that it deserved its own capital letter and had functionally replaced his last name. It was his life, his identity, his present and future and imagined past.

But not his actual past.

No, in Carlos the Scientist's teenage years, filled hormone-fueled angst that he had fortunately grown out of and wild, uncontrollable hair that he unfortunately had not grown out of, he had purchased - he cringed to even remember it - a guitar. He would have probably started a band, if he had any like-minded friends. If the phase had lasted to college, he probably would have been that douchebag sitting on the campus green and strumming away, like flypaper for easily-impressed girls. Carlos' guitar was pawned before he reached senior year, though, to pay for a set of his very own graduated cylinders with enough leftover to buy a used Erlenmeyer flask. 

There did exist, though, evidence of his transgressions against science, good taste, and those with functioning auditory perception in the form of a cassette tape in a box in a closet somewhere in Carlos' mother's home. It was not unlike Cecil's radio broadcast test tapes, in that it was embarrassing, half-forgotten, and he would rather pretend it was a false representation of his past, thank you very much. It might even have had his sister busting into his room to tell him it was time for dinner, at one point. Carlos couldn't remember. Or, more accurately, he refused to allow himself to remember.

Something that he tried very hard to remember, in contrast, was when Cecil's show aired. It was hard enough to catch time in a behaving mood, and harder still since Carlos had gifted Cecil his watch. Carlos had tried, for a while, to leave the radio on in his lab at all times. This proved difficult when the airtime not dedicated to Cecil's show was instead filled with the sound of baboons being stung by thousands of bees, or the footfalls of a ballet company performing a dance on ennui, or the shrieks of a young child listening to the audiobook of The Catcher in the Rye for the first time. It proved impossible to keep the radio on when they decided to air twenty-four hours of lab results being interpreted incorrectly. So Carlos had begun trying to tune in for just the show. 

Today, Carlos only managed to catch thirty seconds of Cecil's broadcast before he went to the weather. Carlos swore under his breath and tried to calculate the risks and benefits of stopping to get Cecil flowers, what with the still-healing gash on his arm from his last attempt at wrestling a bouquet from Night Vale's aggressive strain of rhododendron at the Ralph's. He did not have much time to weigh his options, though, as he was forced to freeze in terror at what came across the airwaves next.

Funny, that Carlos had never stopped to consider where the "weather" Cecil played came from. He had tried asking around why the segment was musical instead of a typical forecast, but like so many comparisons to normality in Night Vale, his questions fell on deaf ears. Often purposefully deaf by mandate of the Sheriff's Secret Police. Carlos had dropped it in favor of more pressing Scientific matters. Cecil, even, had waved off his questions with a laugh, like when Carlos asked about the clock tower.

Carlos was now very much considering the source of Night Vale Community Radio's weather segment, he was considering it more than he had ever considered anything in his life, because where, _where_ would Cecil or his interns have found the tape of a fifteen-year-old Carlos crooning a song of his own making. Present-day Carlos made a strangled, helpless noise that resembled his younger self's singing more than he liked. 

As soon as he unfroze himself (with some reassurance to his lab assistants that, no, he had not _actually_ been frozen because, yes, the chimera was still safely contained in its holding cell), he dashed from his lab and into his car. He found himself unsure where he wanted to go once he got there, though. Under a large rock to die a slow, miserable death seemed like the most sensible option. He could not force himself to make any movement one way or another, his mind swimming with questions. How had this happened; where did the radio station get the music from? Had Cecil been in touch with his mother somehow? Had it come in one of his mother's "care packages" that she refused to stop sending him (even though he was a grown man, Mamá, I don't need rice and Sam's Club gift cards any more, no está su poquito Carlito nunca más, y no necesito ninguna ayuda. Soy un científico, y un científico está autosuficiente. Está la primera cosa que un científi-  
Mamá. ...No, no, Mamá, no lloré- puedo- sí, pero- fine, _sí_ , it's all right.) So, she continued to send them. 

Carlos took a deep breath and pushed the "how" from his mind. The "why" happily took its place. Carlos had, in his brief interest in the weather segment of Cecil's show, investigated if the songs played actually had anything to do with the day's weather. After extensive studies of lyrics, chord progressions, key, time signature, and instrumentation, he had been able to find absolutely no correlation between the songs Cecil played and the day's forecast. 

A new thought suddenly occurred to him, now; what if the songs weren't related to the weather, but to Cecil himself? Carlos tried to think of any case that might prove or disprove this, but the rational part of his mind was set aside with what this theory might mean for today's song. Cecil thought he was an idiot. Cecil didn't want to be with him any more - certainly he wouldn't want to be, now, after hearing that monstrosity on his precious radio show. Cecil had begun to actively hate him, and mocking him on the radio would now become a regular event. Cecil had finally realized that Carlos was not perfect - something that the Scientist had long been attempting to convince him of, but seemed horrifying now that he was facing it.

Surely that realization was not enough to drive Cecil away? They had been dating for months now; Cecil had seen his hair in the morning and his toenail clippings on the bathroom floor and the burnt dinner he had tried to stuff down the disposal in humiliation only to have it begin mocking his cooking. 

He makes sure to run some clean water down said disposal when he gets home as a sort of peace offering. He might need it on his side when Cecil comes over tonight. Which he does, tired but smiling, and folds and drapes his coat neatly over the back of Carlos' recliner before kissing his boyfriend hello. Carlos is too shocked by the pleasantness of this to make any sort of remark except for a gurgling noise.

"Good science today?" Cecil says. Carlos gurgles again, and Cecil tilts his head. "You know I'm not good at these nonverbals, Carlos." 'Carlos,' he says. 'Carlos,' as if nothing is wrong and he still loves him and hasn't even realized that his boyfriend is just the biggest dork ever to dork up dorksville. Carlos manages to clear his throat.

"The," he says. _Well done,_ he thinks. _But maybe some more words, you complete idiot?_ "The weather." _Well done._ "Today." 

Cecil beams. "You listened to my show?" He looks giddy. More giddy than usual, which is already fairly giddy. Carlos didn't know it was possible for him to feel worse right now. 

"Well," he said, "part of it. But, the weather?" 

"Oh, I didn't listen to it today," Cecil says, waving a hand. "I usually get another cup of coffee, or go to the bathroom. It's my only break, you know. Besides, Larry Leroy out on the edge of town said there's a storm rolling in."

Carlos does not know what to feel, but his gut instinct is relief. Wave after wave of relief crashing over him. Cecil did not hear the weather. Cecil does not know, does not hate him. Carlos can find the accursed tape and destroy it, crush it into tiny pieces and run it through the equipment in his lab that he is pretty sure makes antimatter and then feed anything that remains to the chimera. 

He was so preoccupied with patting himself on the back for his genius plan, that he hardly noticed Cecil pulling out his cell phone and tapping out a message, adding, "I can get Celeste to forward it to me, though. Just a minute. Assuming, of course, that time has remained consistent between us and will remain-"

"No!" 

Cecil looked up from his phone, one eyebrow raised. Possibly because Carlos had screeched the word more than said it. 

"That's not necessary. I just, um." Carlos racked his brain for an excuse. "Was wondering?"

"Was something wrong with it?" Cecil asked. "Did it predict frogs raining from the skies again? Because we all left our Christmas hams at the base of the Brown Stone Spire, so we should have six weeks until we have to even think about the plagues again-"

"It's nothing," Carlos said, in perhaps the most unconvincing tone he had ever mustered. He forced a smile that felt like plastic on his face. Cecil opened his mouth to argue again when Carlos had his most (and potentially only) brilliant idea of the day. He lunged forward, holding Cecil firmly by the arms, and kissed him hard on the mouth. As predicted, this both ceased Cecil's talking and distracted him thoroughly from the conversation at hand. Carlos smiled and, just to be sure, said, "Forget about it?"

"All right," Cecil said, flushed and flustered and already plotting the line of trail of kisses he was about to follow down his boyfriend's body. "I thought your song was cute, though." There was a distant "Ha!" from the kitchen sink.

Carlos did not come out of the bathroom for the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> I almost forgot: if you'd like to hear more from me (or my more clever friend who writes it with me), check out @NightValeNews9 on twitter for updates from Night Vale Evening News, the local tv news station in our favorite desert town as I imagine it.


End file.
